How cute are these fabulous Spring themed Cress Egg Heads?
Cress heads have been around for a long time and have been done is so many different ways. Cress is such a simple and fun way to introduce kids to growing seeds because they’re small and super fast to grow, which makes it a perfect seed for starting off with children.
As it grows so quickly, its a fun way to show children how seeds go from a hard speck to a tall seedling, the a plant producing food.
Every year we try to kick our sowing season off with a simple egg cress head to get the kids interested.
We have tried various versions but this time we decided to make Spring themed heads in the shape of Rabbits and Chicks and I think they turned out super cute!
What you will need to grow these Egg Heads
- Egg shells, try to split your eggs near the pointy end to leave as much of the egg to plant in as you can.
- Compost or cotton wool
- Seeds
- Spoon
- Scissors
- Coloured bottle caps
- Coloured paper
- Googly eyes
- Hot glue gun or super glue
- Water spray
How To Make Your Spring Egg Heads
Take your egg shells and wash them out carefully with warm water.
Once they’re clean, sit them into their own bottle cap cup.
Start by taking your googly eyes and stick them to your egg where you want them. We used googly eyes stuck on with hot glue because it’s what we had but you can draw them on or use stickers too.
Draw on a nose and whiskers to make a rabbit or cut out a beak for a chick
Take a small square of coloured paper and fold it over.
Now draw 2 long thin sausage shaped on the paper and cut out so you have to rabbit ears.
Stick these to the inside of the egg facing forward.
For the chick you could add a tuft of hair by cutting this out of paper or perhaps use a coloured feather.
Once you’ve added everything. Leave your shell to dry for a minute or two.
Next take a spoon and spoon compost in to the shells almost to the top.
Gently tap the soil down to settle it and spray with water
You can use cotton wool instead of soil in this project. Compost can be a little messy for little ones but by filling the egg with cotton wool and soaking with water, you can still grow your seeds.
The cress seeds don’t need soil to grow, they are happy growing on the damp paper or cotton wool.
We’ve used cotton wool previously in this post here.
We ended up with lots of bunnies and chick’s, some a little more lop sided than others but all totally cute.
Putting the soil in the egg was a little fiddly for the younger ones but we got there eventually.
Sowing cress seeds in your egg heads.
Sprinkle some cress seeds over the surface of the soil in each egg. Spread the seed around the surface of the compost or cotton wool as evenly as possible.
Once you’ve sown each egg, spray the seeds again with water and set them onto a bright windowsill to start growing.
Cress seeds grow fast so remember to check them everyday and water them again is they start to dry out.
Your seeds should start to sprout in 2 or 3 days so in the mean time you could make a measuring stick to record how quickly they grow by using a lolly stick.
Within 5 to 7 days you should be able to harvest your leaves. You could let the kids play with the cress ‘hair’ using tiny elastic bands. Giving them egg hair styles before finally giving them a haircut.
Simply cut the tops off with scissors and they are ready to eat! We decided to eat our cress leaves in our egg sandwiches for lunch. They were delicious and crunchy. Even the kids who aren’t keen to begin with eventually wanted to try them since they’d grown them.
If you’re looking for more garden projects to try, simply click the projects page in the menu above or try some of our favourites here.
Whatever you decide to try, I hope you enjoy this Egg Head activity. Let us know by leaving a comment below.
